


Monsters Like You and I, or The Mass Grave Ritual

by tenderly_wicked



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, BAMF Mary, Drugs, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, John is a Bit Not Good, PTSD Sherlock, Sherlock (TV) Season/Series 04 Fix-it, Sherlock Whump, Torture, but there's a reason for it :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-10-02 06:21:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10211489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenderly_wicked/pseuds/tenderly_wicked
Summary: John has been behaving strangely since Sherlock’s return. The tension is growing, and as it turns out, Mary is not the only one to have secrets. John has got something to hide, too. He wasn’t supposed to be like that!Once you rule out the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable… isthis. As Anderson would say, stranger things happened. :)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Massive thanks to my beta [SwissMiss](http://archiveofourown.org/users/SwissMiss/pseuds/SwissMiss)!

“Three bloody years… How could you do this to me? I thought you’d got rid of… yeah, how very practical of you.”

It’s John’s voice, husky with anger, but hushed because he doesn’t want to be overheard. Mary listens intently. Is it Sherlock he’s talking to? Got rid of—what?

John’s footsteps. He’s pacing in the kitchen, agitated. When Mary walks in, nonchalantly, like she had heard nothing, there’s a moment when she catches him unguarded—he looks as if he’s about to throw his phone against the wall. The mask of rage crumbles like plaster in a second, and John forces a smile onto his face, his usual smile, but Mary can’t forget what she saw.

There’s always been something underneath his good-humoured countenance and patient manners and cuddly jumpers. Something angry and lost. Frightening.

He’s a nice man who takes a tire lever with him when he goes to a drug den.

He’s a nice man who tells his best friend, his wounded friend, “Sherlock, one more word and you will not need morphine.”

She loves him, there’s no doubt about that, but something is off. Sometimes it’s like he’s two persons, the amiable and loyal John she’d married and the man with a fiendish, crooked smirk she lusts for. Sometimes it’s like he’s _two persons at once_.

According to Sherlock, he’d always been like that, a kind doctor and a ruthless soldier, but Mary suspects Sherlock is an unreliable source of information at the moment. After what he’d been through while on his own—she doesn’t know any details, but it doesn’t take a genius to guess—he’s in pretty bad shape. He’s trying his best to act like nothing has happened, but all the times he suddenly freezes in place or starts talking in an overly cheerful manner or speaks to people who are not there at all… She has seen it too many times in those who are damaged and deny it.

She wonders if John notices what’s going on. It’s hard not to. He’d never been really a good doctor, to be honest; she’d even had to practically spell out the diagnoses of their patients for him when they’d started working together in the surgery. But still, he’d known Sherlock for such a long time. They’d been… um… close. John _must_ realise Sherlock is very far from being fine. So why does John ignore all this? Why does he prefer to stay away, not to see Sherlock for weeks, unless something happens?

 _Relax_ , she tells herself. Re-lax. Two syllables.

It’s not your business. There’s so much else to worry about. Your pregnancy. The threat of Jim Moriarty returning, which would clearly put both John and Sherlock in danger.

But an unpleasant voice in her mind keeps whispering, “Perhaps they were _too_ close. Maybe that’s the reason for everything.”

***

_I that am lost… Oh, who will find me… Deep down below…_

_Forty-five seconds—fifty-two—he keeps thrashing, but strong hands hold him firmly, gripping him by the neck, tugging him down by the hair—and his own arms are twisted back, painfully, he can’t do anything—he can’t—sixty-seven—seventy-eight—_

_…sixteen by six…_

_Out of the water with a splash—breathe! breathe! As if from a distance—a question in Serbian. Puddles on the concrete floor around the bucket. Three pairs of boots. A string of obscenities—someone grabs him by the hair again and…_

He wakes up with a muffled sob, a hand pressed to his mouth. He’s curled up on the sofa, fully clothed, entangled in the folds of his blue dressing gown. For a moment, while his mind is still half-clouded by sleep, he’s afraid he has woken John up.

But John isn’t there, of course he isn’t. And it’s good. Good. John shouldn’t see him like that. He’d be worried (wouldn’t he?), and it’s not fair, making him worried.

Sherlock suppresses a visceral need to text John right now, in the middle of the night, about something utterly unimportant. Would he respond immediately, at least with a reprimand? Would he respond at all? It’s frustrating, but Sherlock can’t tell. His predictions of John’s reactions are badly off.

Maybe John would be able to read between the lines. (Come back. Come back now. If inconvenient, come anyway. I’m lost without my blogger. _I that am lost…_ )

But there’s a distinct possibility it would only scare him off. So it’s better not to take that risk.

It’s utterly irrational, but he’s tempted to close his eyes and imagine John is sitting in the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil. Or maybe he’s cleaning the stove, humming a pop song tune under his breath. ( _I that am lost…_ No, not this one, it’s some silly nursery rhyme, why does it keep coming to his mind?) If John finds syringes in a Petri dish, he’ll be angry and concerned, he’ll come to the living room, squat by the sofa, so close…

Sherlock crumples the hem of his dressing gown in his palm, but it doesn’t feel like holding a hand and he lets go. John wouldn’t hold his hand anyway, he’s not like that.

Better to go on as if John hasn’t noticed anything. He’s just there, somewhere in the flat, doing something peacefully mundane. It’s easy, pretending.

He wonders if his John has always been imaginary, in a way.

***

Okay, she is jealous, let’s admit it. She has been for a long time, maybe right from the start. It’s not like John has ever given her a reason for that. He never looks at Sherlock in a suspicious way as if there were something more than friendship between them. But it’s the way _Sherlock_ looks at John, or avoids looking at him, that makes her wary. If she were to judge by his facial expressions only, she’d say he’s still mourning the loss of a very loved one. John is lost to him, though he’s right here, in his flat, typing a new blog entry.

Mary rubs her belly with one hand, pressing her lower back with the other. John never says, “I chose you over him.” But he had chosen her. So there’s nothing to worry about. Probably. Sherlock’s one-sided pining has been very useful to her so far, since he’s determined to do everything he can to protect John, his devotion automatically extended to her, too, as she’s John’s family now. It’s awful of her, thinking of poor Sherlock so cynically, and she knows it, but it’s hardly worse than shooting him, right?

She does pity him, she really does, but she also feels tiny prickles of fear because what if one day John looks, really looks at what’s right in front of him and sees what she sees? What will he do then? That fear is much stronger than compassion, and it makes her frustrated and scornful. Sometimes, somewhere deep down below, where her past is securely locked up from the world, there’s a scorching hot regret that she’d called an ambulance for Sherlock when she could have just left. A few years ago, before John, before her new civilian life, she would have done just that. How very controversial. Love, or whatever she feels for John, seems to have made her more soft-hearted and more cruel at the same time. Maybe it’s just hormones.

John is hers. He belongs to her only. She’ll do anything to keep him. It’s primitive, animalistic awareness bumping through her veins.

“So, what about Moriarty, then?” she asks out of the blue, just to divert from her maddening thoughts. John has his laptop to distract him, Sherlock has his phone, and she only has an ache in the small of her back. It’s not fair.

She doesn’t hope for a proper answer, and of course Sherlock doesn’t give her one.

“Basically your ‘plan’ is just to sit there solving crimes like you always do,” John says sarcastically, and maybe just a little bit nervously.

“Awesome, isn’t it?!” Sherlock exclaims in an exaggeratedly excited manner. He’s always excessively cheerful nowadays, except for the times when he thinks no one is looking. He’s sad when no one is looking.

***

_Sherlock, you can’t go on spinning plates like this._

Funny that, John. What would he do if he weren’t juggling cases, tweeting, and talking to various people in turns? When he lets go and does nothing, his mind—too often—plays dirty tricks on him, brings back to the surface things he’d thought he’d buried and left behind.

This time, he woke up gasping for air again. His breaths come in as ragged gulps and he can’t control it, a phantom pain in his lower chest where Mary’s bullet pierced him. But it’s all right, he’s healed, he’s alive.

It’s not always easy, pretending he’s glad to be alive. But he tries his best. He might be overacting at times, but no one seems to mind. No one seems to notice, not even John, not even Mycroft.

He feels like he’s wearing a plaster mask of Sherlock Holmes because he’s very tired of being himself, and simply tired of being, but there are cracks in the plaster and they are getting wider and wider with each day.

Sherlock imagines John’s voice: “Hold on, Sherlock. For me. Hold on. You have to.”

And if John tells him to, he has no other choice but to obey. It’s nice to abnegate all responsibility to an invisible magic friend.

***

Mrs Hudson and Molly and Sherlock have left, having had their share of champagne and taking pictures and cooing around little Ms Watson. Well, not Sherlock, in fact. He mostly kept his eyes fixed on his phone like it was physically painful for him to look at the happy couple with the baby.

Mary is simply glad everyone is gone. It’s just her and John and Rosamund Mary. A family. Maybe not an ideal one, but still a family. There are things they will never share, but those are in the past. She hopes so.

There’s a thing that bothers her, though. Why is John so sullen? He’s been smiling and acting nice, but now that they are on their own, he’s visibly deflated. Is it because of Sherlock?

John watches her putting Rosie into the cradle. He just stands there, frowning, and she knows there’s something on his mind. She knows him so well, all his facial expressions, all of his wrinkles, and yet she feels there’s a complete stranger beside her.

“I need to talk to you.”

She’s been dreading this line, and yet she nods calmly. “Okay. Talk then.”

It takes him more than forty seconds to begin. She’s been counting, just to keep herself from shaking out of anticipation.

“It feels strange, dedicating your life to someone,” he says slowly. “Someone so far superior. Smarter. Someone who knows how to pull your strings so you become nothing but a vassal to him. Nothing, literally. Because when he abandons you, without asking, you’re just an empty shell. A body. A face. Nothing more. You were so eager to take whatever shape he wanted to see that you forgot how to be yourself.” 

It sounds so bitter, so caustic. Mary couldn’t imagine John held so much resentment for Sherlock. He’d never spoken like that before.

But then he suddenly touches her arm, with a wan smile. “You make me remember, sometimes. How it feels to be myself.”

It’s a compliment that makes her heart clench. “Only sometimes?” she teases.

John chuckles. “Okay. Almost always.”

He’s silent for a while and she wonders if that’s all she’s going to get, more dancing around the fact that Sherlock had meant so much to him. But then he says, “I don’t know how to tell you. I should, but… I wasn’t… Oh hell, I…”

She waits for him to continue, and he does, after a while, “Remember Sherlock telling us Moriarty must have found someone who looked very much like him, to scare the kidnapped kids and cast a shade of suspicion on him? There wasn’t only the man resembling Sherlock. There was a man resembling his closest friend as well.”

“Sherlock told you that?”

“No. That man… It was me. It took quite a while. It took surgeries to make us identical. It took learning how to speak like him, how to walk like him, how to think like him. Lots of rehearsal. But Jim was always planning things ahead, so he had plenty of time to have me changed and trained. I did it for him. I wanted to.”

“Jim?” she says dumbly. What he is saying doesn’t quite sink in yet.

“We didn’t know about what had happened at Barts, me and several henchmen involved. Sherlock had jumped off the roof, everything went on as planned. I was to take John Watson’s place after Sherlock’s death and approach Sherlock’s brother. Grief makes even most cautious people careless, vulnerable, easy to manipulate. Mycroft Holmes…he could be of some interest to Jim. And it all went perfectly well. John didn’t even resist much, in the state he was after the funeral. Jim’s men took him away, and I became him. But then it turned out there was no Jim anymore. And what was I supposed to do? He never thought of us, mere mortals. He never thought of me.” He flails a hand in desperation. A gesture so familiar. Did it belong to him or the real John Watson?

“So when you spoke about being a vassal…a subordinate to a man so much superior than you…” she begins.

“I wasn’t talking about Sherlock, yeah, if that’s what you wanted to ask.”

Mary laughs, despite herself. “No. No, not possible. You’re kidding me. How could everyone not see… No, scratch that. How could _Sherlock_ not see you’re not John?”

“I’m a perfect copy. Hell, I’m more John Watson than he ever was! You know, it’s like glass doors. People keep banging into them because…”

“…because they look but do not observe?”

“…because they don’t even think of looking. Besides, you’ve seen him, the way he was when he came back. Overly agitated. Poor reaction. He was clearly on something. My guess—heavy painkillers. Then he was on drugs. Then he was on morphine when you… oh well… And now it’s drugs again. I tried my best to push him away. I thought he’d notice. But he didn’t look. He was afraid to. I’d call it elective ignorance. Every inconsistency—he took it for his fault. I think Mycroft suspected something was off. But even if he guessed right about me, he wouldn’t say anything. He doesn’t care for John. John is nothing to him. His brother, though, is another matter entirely. Sherlock sacrificed two years of his life to keep John safe. What would he do if he learned John was dead?”

It’s so bizarre that Mary can’t say what she feels at the moment. Surprise? Strangely, no. It’s as if pieces of a defective puzzle suddenly click into place.

“Only it turns out he isn’t,” John adds bitterly.

“What?”

“He isn’t dead. There was a woman…Jim’s accomplice, or maybe his informant. He never deigned to explain. Now she controls things, or so she says.”

“What things? Who is she?”

“I’ve never seen her. I only talked to her on the phone. I tell you this… I tell it now…because you should know what’s going on. To keep our baby safe if something happens. And something _will_ happen, I just haven’t got the slightest idea what. She called me, but she only told me they still keep John somewhere. She thought it was hilarious. She didn’t sound like a very normal person.” He rubs his forehead. He doesn’t look at Mary. “After Jim’s death…I didn’t know what to do at first. I just went on being John Watson. Went on being. No one took interest in me. And then I met you…and I thought I could leave it all behind. But Sherlock came back, the bastard. I had to be _his_ John Watson again. I didn’t want to, but was I ever so lucky—I succeeded.” A mirthless smirk. “It’s funny. We’ve never been friends, and yet I owe him your life.”

The great Sherlock Holmes, so observant, so sharp-minded, came back damaged and lost, with auditory hallucinations and a fear that his dear John wouldn’t accept him. So the change in John’s behaviour hadn’t surprised him at all. John could be distant, not seeing him in months, and Sherlock would think he’d deserved it.

The next question that comes to her mind is incredibly stupid. “So your name isn’t John?”

His lips twitch. “Spot on. It’s Sebastian. Seb. But you can still call me John. I’ve never liked my name. Besides, I’ve been John Watson for so long that a few hours longer won’t make any difference.”

A few hours. “Are you leaving?”

John is still looking away. “Don’t you want me to?”

“How about Rosie?”

He’s silent for a moment, then he mutters, “It’s for her sake. I might be a danger to you both.”

“So might I. We should get Rosie out of it. We’ll think of something,” she says firmly.

“What do we do?” he wonders almost helplessly and looks up at her for the first time.

She knows what. It’s a trick she’s done so many times.

“We die.”

***

Sherlock ponders if John should look happy now that the baby is born. He doesn’t look happy, not entirely. Maybe he’s just tired. But Mary is tired, too, yet she’s more relaxed than she has ever been.

They both are dozing off sprawled on his sofa, and Sherlock suppresses the urge to creep closer, sit down on the floor, and watch John while he’s sleeping. A bit not good. John wouldn’t like that. It’s better not to make him angry, or he might stop coming to Baker Street now and then. He’s either accompanied by Mary, or Sherlock has to ask her if she doesn’t mind, but it’s better than nothing at all.

Selfishly, he doesn’t want John to be content—and feels rotten because of it. So he avoids looking for further signs that something is off in the Watson family. Instead, he keeps his eyes on Rosie. At least _she_ is fully functioning, as Mycroft puts it. How exhausted must John and Mary be to trust him, of all people, to babysit for them?

He’s unlikely to have children. He’d never thought of that before.

He’s also unlikely to have someone living with him, like John used to.

He’ll never be completely on his own, with so many people dropping by every day, clients with cases of various degrees of morbidity and stupidity. So it’s not like being trapped in a cell, in solitary confinement, when John is not around. More like voluntarily spending time inside of a cardboard bunker. It’s not a prison, he could push the walls and they’d fall, but the real world outside is dismal and obnoxious and maybe it’s better to lock himself down in here and childishly pretend that’s what he wants. Alone is what he has. Alone protects him. Others come and go, and John is just one of them.

***

The past catches up with them faster than they anticipated.

“So you did exactly what you told me not to!” John hisses at her. “You just ran off! And left a note! _My darling, I need to tell you this because you mustn’t hate me for going away_ ,” he mocks her letter. “Marvelous! Perfect epistolary style!”

“At least I know who’s after me,” Mary hisses back. “I know he’s alone. I’d have dealt with it when he found me and then I’d have come home! But no, you had to follow me and leave Rosie alone.”

She has finally taken off her dark wig—oh what a relief! She was sweating heavily under it. It’s still hot, though it’s almost night time. The room in an Oriental style with orange terracotta walls and stained glass windows is dimly lit. John is sitting on the corner of a low table while she stands in front of him. Sherlock is here too, so maybe they shouldn’t have said some things in the heat of the argument.

“Hasn’t it occurred to you he might not go after you and target your family instead?” John asks more calmly. “Kidnap Rosie, just to get to you?”

“No, Ajay is not like that.”

“Too good?”

“Too one-track-minded.” _Not like me_ , she doesn’t add. If she were after Ajay and he had a daughter… Well, maybe she wouldn’t do anything about it _now_ , but before she retired…she was less sentimental then.

John sighs, having given up convincing her she was wrong. “So. AGRA. You said it was your initials.”

She bites her lip. “In a way, it was true.”

So many things between them were true in a way.

John shakes his head. “So many lies.” But when she tries to say she’s sorry, he only sighs again, “I don’t just mean you.”

And yeah, they are more or less even. They both weren’t supposed to be like that. Former assassins living under false names, with a past to die for. Literally.

John’s voice sounds both angry and pleading. “You could have stayed. You could have talked to me. That’s what couples are supposed to do: work things through.” There’s hurt in his eyes when he adds, “Mary, I may not be a very good man, but I think I’m a bit better than you give me credit for, most of the time.”

“All the time,” she admits. “You’re always a good man, John. I’ve never doubted that. You never judge; you never complain. I don’t deserve you. I... All I ever wanted to do was keep you and Rosie safe, that’s all.”

He might not have been kind to others, but with her—it’s true, he’s always tried his best to be a good husband.

He reaches out and puts a hand on top of hers. In the corner of her eye, she sees Sherlock in the shadows, his hands clasped in his lap and his head lowered. This reunion must pain him, and yet he promises, resolutely, “I will keep you safe.” 

And that’s exactly when Ajay chooses to intervene.

***

He almost failed. He’d made a promise, and he almost failed. He brought Ajay to Mary. What would John do if she were killed there and then?

On the plane, he tries to doze off in his uncomfortable seat a few rows from John and his wife. It would be better if John shouted at him, even punched him—and then forgave him. But John hadn’t said a thing, hadn’t accused him of miscalculating, and it makes the weight of guilt heavier.

He wonders what drug Mary gave him when she escaped. He’d passed out for a few hours then, slipped into oblivion without any dreams, and that’s what he wishes for right now. Sleeping pills never have such an effect on him. Drugs—not always. His mind doesn’t cease working, and he can’t stop it.

When they arrive in London, John and Mary will fetch Rosie and then go home, and he’ll probably have chips in a cardboard carton from a stall on the corner. He’s allowed that.

***

“What else don’t I know about you?” John asks tiredly on the long flight home, when Sherlock can’t hear them.

There is one more thing, actually. One very important thing. And a few less important ones. Maybe she should have said something about it when he confessed to her. That would have been the right time. She’ll have to tell him now anyway because their plan of survival depends on it. Ajay has made Mary delay her preparations for quite a while, but perhaps it will turn out all right in the end.

“Our team, AGRA…I wanted a way out of it. But they would never let me leave. So it was me. The Englishwoman, it was me. Ajay was right, I betrayed them. But I didn’t do it of my own accord. Even if I simply left them behind and escaped, I wouldn’t even last six months. Too many people wanted me dead. So I needed an ally.”

John is silent for a moment. She wonders if he wants his hands on her treacherous, lying throat, like Ajay did. “Go on,” he finally says.

“The operation wasn’t meant to be successful, for many reasons. There was a mole selling government secrets who wanted the ambassador to disappear, but it wasn’t just that. I never asked for details, but there had been some great game going on, and the mole had to keep working without suspecting he—or maybe she—had been discovered. So the ambassador who knew too much had to be sacrificed. Besides, my teammates also knew too much and got too greedy... The government wanted to close the freelance programme, and to do it…well…in the most permanent way. I was offered a deal. I bring down my team and go free, more or less.”

“More or less?”

“I got a new identity, but I was to be summoned if my services were needed, to repay for a favour to a certain person.”

“And that person was—”

“Mycroft Holmes.”

John makes an unintelligible sound. Mary would take it for a short laugh, but a very sinister one.

“Formally, all the freelancers worked for one of his subordinates,” she hastens to explain, “but he always controlled the game on the whole.”

“Why am I not surprised,” John murmurs. “So you continued working for him now and then…”

“…and one day he asked me to get acquainted with someone who was of interest to him. To keep an eye on that man. Nothing more.” Her voice hitches a bit when she says, “It was you.”

“So Mycroft planted his agent on me,” John says slowly, looking into the darkness behind the window. “Did he say why? He suspected something?”

“He didn’t deign to explain anything. I thought he wanted to make sure his brother’s…um…best friend was fine after Sherlock’s death, though it wasn’t very much like the Mycroft Holmes I knew, to be worried about someone outside his family. When Sherlock turned out to be alive, it made more sense. I told myself he wanted to keep you safe for Sherlock. But now I don’t know. You said he might have guessed something was wrong. Maybe he did, right from the start. Not that it should get you worried now. He’ll help us anyway.”

“Why would he?”

“Because the real John is alive, and Sherlock would want him back. Sherlock is lost without him, and you’re just…sorry, but you’re just a substitute Mycroft tolerates for Sherlock’s sake. We’ll promise to find out where they keep their hostage. That woman, Moriarty’s partner, will surely contact you again. You’ll let yourself fall into her trap and I’ll back you up, but she shouldn’t consider me a threat. Besides, we should get Rosie out of it before all hell breaks loose. I’m sure Mycroft will agree to support us, he’s not too fastidious. I’ve got a plan. We’ll make the best out of what we have. That old story with the secret-selling mole could be of use.”

John hums, darkly amused. “You speak so convincingly. Even Mycroft probably could believe you.”

“Could _you_?” she inquires. And adds more hesitantly, “Are we still good?” Though it’s probably a funny way to put it.

John shrugs. “Yeah. I suppose. You know, one secret more, one secret less…maybe it doesn’t make much difference. I just need time for it to sink in.”

He’s still angry, Mary can feel it, and he has every right to be, but will he get over it? She very much hopes he will.

“Is there something I still don’t know about you either?” she asks, but it’s okay if he doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to know his past. One secret more, one secret less—it’s really of little importance.

Maybe John is not quite the man she wanted him to be. But he’s her man. He’s the one. Perhaps she won’t be able to change him to her liking, as someone else did, but she can make him remember what he wants to be, just like he makes her forget some things she’d rather leave behind.

***

He tried to save her. He tried his best. When Mary said she wouldn’t let Vivian escape and practically provoked her to take out the gun, he talked and talked and talked, he gloated, he jibed, so Vivian would aim it at _him_.

But he failed Mary again, this time irreversibly.

He stood there and couldn’t do anything to help. She said she liked him. She said they were even now.

John’s fingers were stained with blood. So much blood. There wasn’t that much when Mary shot him.

“You made a vow, you swore it,” John said, his voice trembling with rage, and then turned back to his dead wife. And Sherlock knew he shouldn’t stay. He didn’t have the right to.

***

“Couldn’t you do without that farewell speech? It was horribly cheesy,” John grumbles. “It was like in a bad movie.”

“Well, it worked anyway,” she says cheerfully while she deletes a message to Mycroft on her phone—LAZARUS IS GO. “It was Sherlock who almost spoiled our scene, poor thing. He tried so hard to make Vivian shoot him instead of me that she almost did, despite her deal with Mycroft. Do you think he’ll keep his word and let her escape for cooperating with us? Not that I’m really interested… By the way, what did you want to tell me? You said you needed to tell me something, before we left for the aquarium. God, I need a shower. I’ve got that fake blood all over me.”

“I flirted with someone else,” John blurts out.

Well, that’s unexpected.

“She didn’t know me,” he says, contemplating the floral wallpaper pattern. “She thought I was a nice guy. Someone ordinary. I just…I just liked someone thinking that of me, I guess. Because _you_ know me now. You know what I am. You might still want to be with me, for the sake of Rosie, but…”

“Do you think I’m with you only because of Rosie?” she cuts him off harshly.

“You said so yourself. When I wanted to leave, you said—what about her?”

“For god’s sake, what should I have said? Should I have begged you to stay? Please, John, or Seb, or whoever you are, don’t go because you’re the love of my life?”

He looks back at her and blinks in surprise at her furious outburst. “Um. Am I?”

“What?”

“The love of your life?”

She makes herself breathe in and out to calm down, or else she might slap him. Relax. _Re-lax._ Two syllables. “It didn’t take me months to decide if I still want you in my life or not. I think that might be a hint.”

Suddenly he steps close and wraps his arms around her, so tight it hurts, despite the fake blood and her efforts to wriggle out. He holds her and holds her, and finally she gives up and lets him.

“Are you angry with me because it took me so long to decide?” he whispers into her ear. “I thought it might be for the best for _you_ , and I wouldn’t have to explain anything. I guess I was wrong. It wouldn’t be good for both of us.”

***

_He never wants to see you again._

_He never wants to see you again._

_He never wants to see you again. He’d rather have anyone but you. Anyone. Anyone._

It’s important to focus on something else. A new case. Anything. But these words keep piercing Sherlock’s mind like needles.

 _A needle under his nail…_ No. Don’t think of it.

 _A needle up his vein…_ That could bring welcome oblivion. Stupor. Nothingness. It’s a wrong thing to do, and John would be appalled, but John isn’t there. Maybe he never will be.

***

John has put on a jacket, a set of keys in one hand and a briefcase in the other. “I’m picking up Rosie this afternoon, after I’ve seen my therapist. Got a new one; seeing her today.”

He sounds too cheerful. A man who has just lost his wife shouldn’t be so nonchalant.

“Are you gonna tell her about me?” Mary inquires.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t... you know I can’t. She thinks you’re dead.”

And of course it’s hard for him to speak of her as of a dead person. But he should.

“John, you’ve got to remember. It’s important. I _am_ dead. Everyone should think that. Please, for your own sake and for Rosie’s. Just tell yourself all the time: this isn’t real. I’m dead. John. Look at me. I’m not here. Imagine I’m a ghost or something if you can’t imagine me gone. You have to be _believable_ , you have to be grieving. I get it why Sherlock didn’t inform his John he was alive. It’s hard to fake grief. But you can do it, I know you can.”

John stares blankly into the corner of the room for several seconds, avoiding her gaze, and his voice breaks slightly when he says, “Okay, I’ll see you later.”

It wouldn’t be easy for her either, imagining him gone.

***

_I that am lost…Oh, who will find me…_

Oh who will find me… No one. Anyone.

Sherlock isn’t quite sure what’s real anymore, except for the primitive desire to stay alive. It’s still there, despite everything he’d done to get an appointment with death.

He’s at the bottom of the pit, and he’s never climbing up. He can’t do it. Not alone.

Maybe John won’t come. If he doesn’t, no one else will, but then it doesn’t matter.

One of the nurses said he was awfully strong, but there’s a limit even for him. He’s tired of being strong. He’s tired of being clever. So he chose be weak and stupid just this once, and if John doesn’t come, it will be over very soon and he won’t even have much time to be upset about it. Isn’t it nice?

Ending his life by putting himself into the hands of a serial killer is a very creative method of suicide. Not worse than taking a shot for someone else.

“You know what? I’m getting a little impatient,” Smith tells him, and Sherlock’s heart gives a feeble lurch, no matter how much he wants to take it stoically.

_I don’t want to die._

Sherlock grabs at Smith’s arm and flails weakly with his other hand, trying to get free from Smith’s hold, but his struggles become less and less vigorous, and Smith keeps whispering, his crooked teeth bared, “Maintain eye contact. Maintain eye contact. I like to watch it happen.”

When the door smashes open ( _John. John. It’s John_ ), Sherlock isn’t certain at first if it’s not a delusion—a parting gift from his overactive imagination.

***

John hadn’t been that furious since he’d learned about her assassin past.

“What were you thinking, leaving Sherlock a message? _Save John Watson_! I do my best to keep him from our house so he wouldn’t find out you’re alive, and you’re sending him video recordings!”

“Well, I had to occupy him with a case while we’re waiting for things to develop, or he might do something stupid.”

“Why should we give a damn?”

“If he takes his life, for instance, before we find his friend and disappear, Mycroft Holmes will be very, very upset. And making him upset doesn’t bode well.”

John cringes, but Mary can see she has persuaded him. Without Sherlock being safe and sound, they have no leverage over Mycroft. He’s not overly concerned about saving John Watson per se. He only tends to his brother’s interests.

“Besides,” she says more softly, “don’t you feel sorry for him, just a little? I mean Sherlock, not Mycroft, god forbid. He is the cleverest man in the world, but he’s human, he’s not a monster.”

“He is,” John mutters, still moodily. “You haven’t seen him lately.”

She chuckles. “Yeah, okay, all right, he is. But he’s our monster, in a way. And hardly worse than we are. Maybe a little bit better.”

John smiles at her, softened too. “That’s what I imagined you would say.”

“Well, you know me then.”

“Maybe I do, after all. Just…if you please, no more video messages without telling me first, okay?” He leans to peck her on the cheek, briefly, but then lingers, sidetracked by a different idea, and starts slowly kissing a line down her neck. “Do you think I should go check on Sherlock and kind of reassure him instead of having a quarrel with you?” he asks when he gets to her collarbone.

“Mmhm, in a while,” she says. 

***

A secret sister. A grenade on top of a singing drone. A fortress island with a maze of grey rooms. It’s all too much, even by Sherlock’s standards. It’s like a very bad dream, and it continues to seem so when he finds himself sprawled face down on top of a table in a dark room. He’s laid out like a sacrifice under the full moon visible through a large metal grille in the ceiling. His first thought is that he must have overdosed in some drug den, another empty house, one of many. The girl’s voice in an earpiece startles him, and then it’s John speaking: “I’m here. Sherlock, I’m here. Sherlock. You found me. Oh god. You found me. It’s been so long.”

So long? Yes. Hours and hours, the girl said. But he hasn’t found John yet, not really. He doesn’t even know if they’re in the same place, and it makes his blood go cold for a second, but he doesn’t let himself panic. He should stay calm and solve the case.

The drug that knocked Sherlock out still makes his head feel clogged and fuzzy. He’s not quite sure what he’s saying and what John is answering. What did John ask him about the girl on the plane? “What, she’s still up there?” or “Wait, who’s still up there?” John’s voice sounds different somehow, laden with emotion. The way it was when he spoke to John on the phone, ready to jump from the roof. _No. Don’t. No. SHERLOCK!_

Doesn’t matter. It’s more important to keep exploring. Now he knows John is chained up in a well, which isn’t good, but at least it’s something. Voices changing in his earpiece make his thoughts hopelessly muddled, like words and dates in a wrong sequence.

_I that am lost… Oh, who will find me… Deep down below…_

_Mycroft has been lying to you…_ Is it John’s voice in his head or not?

 _Deep waters, Sherlock, all your life. In all your dreams…_ Is it his sister talking? How does she know about his dreams? No, he must be still hallucinating.

But he’ll solve the puzzle anyway. Now he knows how to do it, so many years after he’d failed his best friend. This time he’ll get it right. They both will get it right, he and Eurus.

“It’s not too late,” he promises to her fervently, desperately, on his knees in a burnt-out bedroom. “I’m here. You’re not lost any more. You just...you just went the wrong way last time, that’s all. Tell me how to save my friend. Eurus... help me save John Watson.”

For a moment, she looks into his eyes hopefully, trembling and tearful, like a lost child. And then her face changes, morphs into something else entirely. It’s like another mask cracking and revealing her true features.

“Oh my dear. Did you really think everything could be resolved with a hug? I’m afraid not. Well, it was a nice game anyway. Thanks for playing along. I like rituals, you know. This one was worth repeating. Victor and John will soon rest together in the same grave. As for you, I don’t think you’ll ever rest after that. It’s a problem with you, ordinary people. You get too emotionally involved. Too attached to your pets.”

And she smiles at him most amiably.

***

They stand under the trees, hidden in the darkness, but close enough to have heard what Sherlock muttered, gesturing madly among the fake graves.

“I came as soon as I could,” Mary says apologetically.

“No, it’s fine. I didn’t mind waiting.”

“Why did she let you go?”

John shrugs. “What else would she need me for? She thought it would be funny, killing the real John and then telling Sherlock he’d spent so much time with a fake while his beloved blogger was suffering in her clutches. But maybe she changed her mind if she let Sherlock solve the puzzle. Now we can leave, I suppose? Sherlock will cope on his own. He won, right?”

She’s about to say, ‘Yes, what a nice happy ending,’ when it strikes her. “Oh my god. She’s not going to let John live. The riddle—it’s a dead loop. It starts with her singing a song, and when solved, it just takes you back to her. She didn’t give Sherlock a direction. She mocked him. John is going to die, like the other one.”

John is silent, and Mary knows what he’s thinking. If the real John dies, everyone might think it was _him_. He’ll be dead like Mary. Free to escape. They’ll need to extract Rosie of course, but that could be managed.

She knows what’s on his mind because for a moment, she considers this option herself.

“No,” she says firmly. “No. We won’t leave. We owe him. I owe him. Magnussen. Ajay. He protected me against them. He tried his best to help _you_. Surely it counts for something?”

John sighs. “Oh fine.”

“What do we do then? Police—not a good idea, considering you’re so heavily involved and I’m officially dead. Maybe later. But what now? Should we interrogate her?”

“No, not her. She’s a psychopath. She won’t tell us anything. But she couldn’t have kept John here and then put him into some hidden place all by herself. She had accomplices from Sherrinford, and they are still here. Five of them. Professionals. I’m not sure I can take them all out alone, but if you join me…”

They smile simultaneously, and maybe it’s a bit not good, grinning like that because they anticipate a fight. But it is what it is.

Two shots, one chokehold, one knockout, and one broken clavicle later they find themselves by a ruined farmhouse. There’s an old well hidden in the bushes, and it’s flooding. It takes their joint effort to turn off the rusty tap.

“I think we’ll need a saw,” Mary says. “And a rope of course. I hope John doesn’t freak out when he sees you.”

He suddenly catches her hand. “Um. Mary, listen…I’m not good at making speeches, but…you know I’m not the man you thought I was; I’m not that guy. I never could be. But who you thought I was...is the man who I want to be. If it makes sense to you.”

She can’t but smile fondly. “Aww. I always suspected you’re a romantic. Now go find a rope. No, stop, I think I’ll kiss you first.”

There’s an abrasion on his cheekbone and a smudge of someone else’s blood on his sleeve. He practically reeks of adrenaline, and that’s how she likes him.

***

“Sherlock!”

A ghost in dripping wet clothes wandering through a burnt house. _Are we both dead?_ Sherlock wonders.

The ghost crouches beside him, and his touch is cold but solid. Sherlock shudders at it, and his mind suddenly seems to shirt-circuit. John. John. John.

“Sherlock? Are you all right?”

He’s not. But if John is, it’s all that matters.

It takes a few hours to settle things. Police cars and vans are parked all around the manor house and a helicopter’s rotors can be heard nearby. John is wrapped in a grey blanket and looks fine, more or less, considering he’d spend a few hours in the cold water…and years locked away in a cell.

“How could you not have noticed it wasn’t me?” John keeps asking. “You, of all people! I mean, I saw him when they took me and I saw him now. He was a perfect replica, I get it. But there must have been something…some tiny things that would give him away. Hm? And his wife…she’s very much alive, I assure you.”

Sherlock winces, not daring to look up at John. He waits.

“Sherlock? Hey.”

If John hits him, it’s all right. He’s entitled. Sherlock knows he let John down, horribly, and no explanation will ever fix it. Whatever comes next—he deserves it.

“Sherlock…you look like… Are you afraid of me?”

“No, of course not.” His voice sounds false to his own ears.

“What did he do to you? The other me.”

Sherlock blinks. And blinks again. He’s not going to cry like a four-year-old. Definitely not. He has no reason to. “Nothing,” he says, and it’s true. “He even tried to be my friend, I guess. He just…wasn’t the usual you, and I thought it was my fault. I thought—”

And somehow it happens after all, hot tears welling up despite his will. It must look pathetic.

At first, he doesn’t quite realise what’s going on when John reaches for him and pulls him close, awkwardly but very determinedly. It’s like a reversal of that moment when he held the not-real-John after Mary’s not-real-death. A laugh at the déjà vu comes out as a sob.

John keeps rubbing a hand between his shoulder blades and makes soothing meaningless sounds. The police officers must be staring at them, but Sherlock doesn’t care.

“When I was alone,” he murmurs in a tight voice, “I kept talking to you. All the time. I wouldn’t cope otherwise. I got used to it so much I could imagine you answering. I could even hear your voice in my head. When I returned…nothing changed. I kept talking and imagining your responses, that’s all. And you still weren’t there.”

John sighs into his shoulder. “I kept talking to you, too. When they took me after the funeral, they didn’t know for sure if you were alive or not. But they thought you could have faked your suicide to save me and the others. They mentioned the snipers and how you were forced to jump… And you know what? I was glad they kidnapped me. The mad hope they gave me—it was worth it. All the time I was there, I kept picking up things—whispers, laughter, gossip. I know you were caught in Serbia. I know what happened, they talked about it. God, Sherlock, the first thing I thought—you’re not dead, it’s for real. And then it caught up with me—they knew about it because some of Moriarty’s other thugs were beating you up then. Torturing you.”

“It was nothing,” Sherlock assures him hastily. Something he had always known he would say if John ever asked him. “Don’t think about it, it was just a few days.”

“And then you were shot. Your sister, she was mad about it because it could spoil her game if you died. She said you almost—”

Sherlock finally musters the courage to put his arms around John’s waist, and John doesn’t seem to mind. They stand like that in the shimmering blue lights of the police cars, and Sherlock doesn’t want it to end.

***

“You said I shouldn’t make any video messages without telling you first. So. I’m telling you.” She waves a disc with ‘Miss you’ written on it.

John—she still calls him John, and he doesn’t argue—quirks a brow at her. “What’s that for?”

Mary shrugs. “A sort of P.S. We left without saying a proper good-bye to Sherlock.”

John looks pensive for a moment, clearly not sure it’s a good idea, then says, “Fine. Do as you wish. But don’t expect him to still be your friend. We’re just even with him, that’s all. They’re not going to invite us to Baker Street for dinner some day or babysit for us while we’re on holiday.”

Mary smiles dreamily. “Who knows. With sociopaths like us one can never tell what’s possible and what’s not. After all, stranger things have happened.”

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to visit me on [Tumblr](http://tenderlywicked.tumblr.com) :)


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